Verizon's Tracking Tradeoff; Purell Bets On Loyalty

Verizon made headlines on Monday with promises to upgrade upload speeds, but also announced an interesting development for advertisers. The company is launching a rewards program centered on tracking data, through which Verizon subscribers can earn points for every dollar spent on wireless services, including on Verizon products and gift card offerings. What's in it for Verizon? Subscribers will have to consent to releasing their location data, which is valuable information for marketers looking to serve targeted ads. Read more at the News & Observer. This is reminiscent of business models such as Enliken’s.

Pure Loyalty

Purell is among a handful of CPG brands who are betting on loyalty programs, a mainstay for travel brands and retailers but a rarity for consumer packaged goods. Through its new “Be Well Network,” Purell is looking to expand the limited amount of consumer data the company has pooled to date. So far, Purell has relied on data such as consumer purchasing habits and attitudinal studies. But according to Kathleen Leigh, marketing director for Purell Consumer commerce, that's not enough. Read more via Ad Age.

BuzzFeed’s Social Referrals

While some publishers have largely ignored Pinterest as a platform to drive content traffic, BuzzFeed is apparently seeing some tangible results. The company began producing content specifically for sharing on Pinterest two years ago, and the social scrapbooking site has now become BuzzFeed's second biggest source of social referrals (bumping Twitter down a peg). "Of course, Pinterest and Twitter are very different animals," writes Forbes' Jeff Bercovici, "so there’s no reason to treat the competition as a zero sum one — except in some ways it is." Markets might soon see the site as a window of opportunity. Read on.

Marker Seeking Multichannel

Email has long been the most effective channel for lead nurturing but according to a new study by Bizo and Oracle, B2B marketers may be seeking (Bizo and Oracle likely hope so) a more multichannel approach. Adding automation to the email mix might help expand lead nurturing. Seventy-two percent of the 505 marketers surveyed already use an automation platform for email marketing, and 82% will either maintain or increase investments in these platforms by the end of the year. Read on at Direct Marketing News.

Fingerprinting

Referencing work from university researchers in the United States and Belgium, ProPublica’s Julia Angwin identifies AddThis, German digital marketer Ligatus and dating site Plentyoffish as companies using “canvas fingerprinting” technology which attempts to track users across devices. Responding to concerns about consumer privacy, AddThis CEO Rich Harris tells Angwin his “company has only used the data collected from canvas fingerprints for internal research and development. The company won’t use the data for ad targeting or personalization if users install the AddThis opt-out cookie on their computers.” Read more.

Retargeting Travel Funding

Targeting the travel industry, Intent Media announced yesterday it had received another round of funding to the tune of $22.7 million (in total, $50 million+ according to Crunchbase). Read the release which includes this boilerplate: “Intent Media's data-driven advertising products help to unlock the revenue potential of online travel companies while safeguarding their core transaction businesses.” Adara Media and Sojern are among several companies “travelling” in Intent Media’s competitive set.

Banana Audiences

On Monday, Facebook released a case study detailing how Banana Republic used Custom Audiences to increase both reach and ROAS, and target younger demographics. The results proved 4x higher returns on ad spend compared to other display advertising channels, and 60% higher click-through rates with Facebook's lookalike models compared to other display media. Read the case study.